The Two-Week Clenching Audit: Finding the Habit You Don’t Know You Have
Your teeth should not be touching right now.
At rest, your jaw should hang slightly open, teeth apart, lips together, tongue resting lightly against the roof of your mouth. Total contact time between your upper and lower teeth across an entire day — eating included — should amount to only a few minutes.
For a lot of people with jaw pain, it’s hours.
Awake bruxism — semi-voluntary clenching during waking hours, usually silent and almost always unnoticed — has a reported prevalence of around 20% in adults, and studies suggest 85% to 90% of people experience bruxism episodes at some point in their lives. Unlike night grinding, which a partner can hear, daytime clenching announces itself to nobody.